Donkey Kong Through the Years (Part 9): MP4 Donkey Kong
(Previous: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8)

Featured in:

• Mario Party 4 (Artwork, In-Game)
• Mario Party -e (Artwork)
• Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour (Artwork, In-Game)
• Mario Party 5 (Artwork, In-Game)
• Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (Artwork, In-Game)
• Mario vs. Donkey Kong (In-Game)
• Mario golf: Advance Tour (Artwork, In-Game)
• Donkey Konga (Artwork, In-Game)
• Mario Power Tennis (Artwork, In-Game)
  
• Donkey Konga 2 (Artwork, In-Game)
• Mario Kart DS (In-Game)
  
• New Play Control! Mario Power Tennis (Artwork, In-Game)

Disclaimer: For the next few sections, some of Donkey Kong’s character models become very homogeneous.  As such, several revisions of a single render may be listed as one entry, or a unique model may be overlooked/slotted into the wrong category by mistake.  As the goal here is to be informative, feel free to use the Ask! feature to inform us of any mistakes if your eyes are sharper than ours.

So hey, Donkey Kong’s first standardized character model made by Rare is here!  Considering Namco took up Donkey Konga around this time with NST played fast and loose with characterization to make Donkey Kong fight Cranky Kong’s old nemesis (Can’t stress it enough: DK Arcade and Donkey Kong Country do not refer to the same Donkey Kong in their titles) it also makes this the first non-Rare 3D model of the character to appear in games with “Donkey Kong” in the title.  So, how’s the first ride out without the training wheels?

At first glance, the details aren’t terribly different: while it’s apparent that Donkey Kong has changed, what isn’t is how he’s changed.

Let’s start with the obvious: as touched on in the last feature, the Gamecube era saw a shift where the lines between Nintendo’s in-Game models and promotional models began to blur: The In-Game models got prettier, and the promo models got a bit rougher.  Donkey Kong also began appearing in far more Mario games than titles of his own.  Bottom line?  He’s gonna have a lower polygon count, he’s not gonna be fur-shaded, and the texture on his body is gonna be a bit basic (you can find the “seam” of it starting at the middle of his head.  His cuffs are also now a flat texture, sometimes a blurred one (see disclaimer above).

 More subtle elements appear when you take another look.  His color palette has been slightly shifted around, with his fur more of a uniform, matted brown, almost a mid-point between his DK64 look and the MK64 model used in spin-off games.  His ears have been ever-so-slightly simplified, which at certain angles, makes them look stretched-out.  His cowlick also doesn’t have as much of a secondary curve to it as older models, which means it retains a distinctive silhouette more often and presumably is less of a strain to animate (though some games, like Konga’s in-game sprite, don’t adjust it to have any kind of curve, resulting in a spikey-headed Donkey Kong): future games will adjust the length a bit, but generally the inward-curve back toward his head is gone for good.

In terms of other, permanent changes, we see that Donkey Kong now has brown eyes; there was a hint of this in Melee, but here they are more established (curiously, this is around the same time Diddy Kong’s blue eyes reverted to pure black, leaving an odd character detail disparity between the two).  He has a tongue, but it’s much wider, filling his mouth far more.  His nostrils no longer appear “carved” sharply into his face, like a subtracted shape/Jack O’ Lantern:  They are a angled shape that recesses at the top and tapers into the rest of his skin at the bottom, leaving no real “hole” in his nose.  The depth and smoothness of this will be played with in future designs.

Finally…We come to the teeth.  Often referred to derisively as the “Toothy Grin” ™” or when referring to the Donkey Kong in Mario Vs. Donkey Kong as the “Toothy Grin Jackass”.  Teeth were introduced as a part of the 3D Donkey Kong’s anatomy in the Melee model.  Here they have been remodeled to be a visible two rows of teeth, with a prominent gumline, as they will remain.  The teeth will be present in essentially all 3D portrayals of Donkey Kong going forward;  Some games will almost never use them (Mario Power Tennis), some only in a handful of emotionally-relevant contexts like anger, embarrassment, or showboating (DK: Jungle Climber, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze), and others near constantly (Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat, Mario Kart DS, Mario Kart 8).

Whether you think they make him look stupid/creepy, think he’s odd without them, or really don’t care, it’s certainly one of the most polarizing elements in DK’s design history..in so much as people are aware that there’s been debates about them.  But there’s no argument that there are cases where it seems developers have made including his teeth in their games a bizarrely high priority…